The PAMLA deadline is fast approaching! Last year it was in Sunny San Diego; this year, in nearby Riverside, so if you're local, this is an ideal opportunity to participate. There are a huge variety of topics to choose from, most of which can easily be addressed through a children's literature critique. Below are a few that are specifically geared toward childhood though.

Looking
for paper proposals for approved "Disney and its Worlds" session for
the 2014 PAMLA Conference in Riverside, CA. From the Frankfurt School to contemporary cultural studies, the
social ramifications of Disney movies and theme parks, and their
cultural penumbra, have long provided rich terrain for critical
scholarly analysis. This panel explores the discursive, literary,
filmic, and historical dimensions of the Disney phenomenon in both the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Papers that draw upon the rich
canon of scholarship on Disney and engage with its cultural effects
through critical theory, spatial or historical analysis, Feminist
methodologies, or close reading strategies are particularly encouraged.

“That Old Black Magic”: Temporality of Magic

contact: Sören Fröhlich, sfrohlic@ucsd.edu

Recent
scholarship in the ‘temporal turn’ has raised fundamental questions in
the intersection of time and cultural representations (). However, this
scholarship frequently side-steps cultural representations of time as
malleable and non-rational, as well as supernatural temporalities.
Thinking alongside the 2014 PAMLA Conference theme “Familiar Spirits,”
this panel invites papers that consider the relation between magic and
time.
What happens when we consider that at once relative and all-pervasive
dimension of time through the lens of the imagination, the cultural,
and the irrational? Whose time is it that counts, and how can it be
manipulated? This panel invites discussions of time in representation of
magic including, but not limited to literature, art, film, and history.
Topics might consider questions like:
Is there a connection between legacies of racism, sexism, or gender discrimination and time?
Does time differ in the conception of magic across disciplines?
How do religious and magical notions of time cooperate or clash?
Can temporal changes associated with trauma and anxieties be represented through magic?
How are nostalgia and magic related temporally?
What characterizes magic temporality or the temporality of magic?
Which questions about time does the historiography of magic offer?
How can narrative dimensions of time be manipulated to convey a sense of magic?
How do magical manipulations of time relate to retrospective or futuristic projections?
Can time be the different between good and bad magic?

Gothic Childhood Contact: Kate Carnall Watt“Gothic Childhood” welcomes submissions exploring either children’s gothic/horror literature/film or children in gothic/horror literature/film. From Casper to The Ring, from Harry Potter to Poltergeist, children are depicted in the supernatural and the supernatural is depicted for children. Papers may explore magic, conjuring, spirits, hauntings, Spiritualism, manifestations, the paranormal, the strange, and the uncanny in horror and gothic films or novels, examining how these supernatural, horror, or gothic tropes connect to the depictions of children or childhood within the examined work.